Mathematics, mathematics education and computer programming.

A Sixth Form PRET Homework

One of the many jobs that I had wanted to do over the summer was to create PRET homeworks for the A-Level modules that I was going to be teaching this coming year. Along with the website design this didn’t really happen, so now I am doing them throughout the year as I go.

I thought I would share one I made this week as I am trying to do at least one resource post and one more general math/education/math education post every week.

Jo Morgan (@mathsjem does a great job collating all the PRET homework that people contribute at her PRET homework site, so make sure you take a look to see all the wonderful homework for KS3,KS4 and KS5 that are available. The one I contributed this week is for “The method of differences” which is in the Edexcel Further Pure 2 module.

The use of the method of differences to sum infinite series isn’t often touched upon in A-Level and so I included that in the research part. For the skills section i tried to make most of similar to the ones in the official A-Level text book, apart from Question 4 which is harder than you tend to get for the current FP2 syllabus. It is only harder as I don’t give the function you require to apply the method of differences; the students only need to remember that the function tends have a power that is one order above the terms you are trying to sum and it drops out fairly easily. The stretch questions I have taken from the old Rostock and Chandler books that I love, these are harder than the ones typically seen at FP2, but definitely not insurmountable.